Offices Held

Biography

Noel’s candidature for the county seat in 1601, when he was 19, was promoted by his father, who was sheriff at the time, in the face of opposition from (Sir) John Harington II. He finally came in at a by-election, the date of which has not been ascertained. No activity has been found for him in the 1601 Parliament. Noel was knighted by Lord Mountjoy in 1602 and served in the Irish wars as a knight banneret. In 1603 his father wrote to Cecil asking him to take his son, who was about to enter court, under his protection, and Noel soon made a fortunate marriage to the daughter of Baptist Hickes, brother of Michael Hickes. Though he succeeded to his father’s position in Rutland, and entertained James I at Brooke, he spent much time at court. In his later years he supported the royalist cause, he and his eldest son following Charles I into the north in 1639. He died 8 Mar. 1643 in camp at Oxford and was buried four days later at Campden, without the ‘ripping or bowelling’ of his body, which he had feared. The ‘convenient tomb’, for which he left £200 to the minister, was not erected until the Restoration. His own and his wife’s estates had long been divided by settlement between their two sons.